Smokey Robinson, at 73, is still the consummate cool. He still has a voice as smooth as butter.

And he has a deep catalog of 46 albums in 45 years –one of which won him a Grammy just six years ago -- and nearly 40 Top 40 hits.

Robinson offered all of that at his concert Friday at Sands Bethlehem Event Center, but he also frustratingly chose to dilute the show with “entertainment” of jokes and patter and audience participation that diminished the music.

So what could have been a great concert ended up being an hour-and-45-minute show that still was very good, but offered just 16 songs – several of them two-minute (or less) snippets of his hits -- and long stretches of reminiscing and often self-deprecating humor.

At one point, Robinson did a 10-minute lead-up to his first No. 1 pop hit – “Tears of a Clown,” which he released in 1970 with The Miracles – telling how he wrote it with Stevie Wonder. The he played less than two minutes of the actual hit, with his six-man band playing at its most Muzak.

The show’s opening also was like that. Starting with The Miracles’ early hit “Going to a Go-Go,” Robinson played versions of the iconic songs “I Second That Emotion” and his R&B No. 1 “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me” that all clocked in at less than two minutes; the last song with a minute-long ending of just two dancers performing to the music.

And the songs were amply filled in by his three background singers and his having the nearly full audience sing along.

It wasn’t needed. When Robinson released his voice, it was like a marinated mellow horn. And when he finally sang a full song, “Quiet Storm,” his voice had a creamy consistency –perhaps his range was shorter, but he still had a sweet falsetto and held a long note.

His abilities as a performance also were intact, as he emoted and gestured with his voice and hands as he strolled the stage.

“Ooo Baby Baby” was slow and intense, so much so the crowd cheered the opening and whooped him along as he reared back and grimaced.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” Robinson responded, jokingly. “We should have played that first.” And then he promised the audience, “We came to be intimate. To get closer. To feel.”

And he was right. But then he ran through three hits he wrote for The Temptations –“The Way You Do the Things You Do,” “Get Ready” and “My Girl” -- in literally six minutes, including an audience sing-along on the last one. Again, his voice was fine – he even playfully hit a shrill note on the last song.

The jokes were far less successful than the music: about lusting after his dancers, about being old (while dancing, he thrust his pelvis and said, “I got a little carried away”) and about Stevie Wonder being blind (“He drives too fast, and sometimes he texts while doing it”).

But it’s hard to imagine Wonder, a Motown contemporary of Robinson, doing those kind of jokes in his concerts.

The concert got markedly better – and showed how much better the entire show could have been -- when an audience member loudly requested The Miracles’ first charting song, “Bad Girl” from 1959. After initially dismissing it, Robinson he had the band kick in, and attacked it with more demanding vocals.

He followed that with “Fly Me to The Moon,” from his Grammy-winning 2007 disc of standards, “Timeless.” As is the case with many classic artists who sing others’ material with more reverence than they sing their own, Robinson nailed it with intensity, his best performance to that point.

The same was the case with two new songs from his 2009 disc “Time Flies When You’re Having Fun.” “Love Bath” was sung sensually, with a burning voice and dance. And “That Place” was seven minutes of convincing orgasmic R&B that did its euphemistic title well. Robinson sang emphatically, eyes squeezed shut, drawing the audience’s cheers for holding a long note.

Even the band was better, playing with nuance it had skipped much of the night. Robinson continued that vibe with his last No. 1, “Just to See Her” from 1987, and it was so good, the audience impulsively clapped along. And when he did a swivel-hipped dance, it was serious.

Then a slow guitar intro started his best-loved hit, “Tracks of My Tears.” To sparse accompaniment, Robinson sang in a spotlight, eyes closed, giving the song the gravitas it deserved. The audience gave it a standing ovation filled with hollers, and deservedly so.

Had Robinson played like that the entire night, the concert would have been as classic as he is. A few more hits in place of the jokes – he skipped great songs such as “Being With You” and “Shop Around” – and it would have been a night for the ages.

He even started his final song, “Cruisin’,” great – slower, so that it’s sexual meaning was loud and clear, as he danced seductively, even rubbing his thighs. But he closed it with a 10-minute bit in which he split the crowd for an audience-participation contest.

JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.